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I caught wind of this website and their collection of speaker video’s through some contacts at work. I’ve watched or listened to several of these speakers so far and I have to say that they’re fantastic. The first I watched was the John Doerr presentation and it left a lump in my throat. Julia Sweeney made me laugh out loud with her reflections on encountering Mormon Missionaries, and Gabriel makes a passionate statement about human rights. Bono bowled me over with a powerful and eloquent plea for recognizing the plight of Africa as a global emergency, and Dawkins presses the scientific community on the boundaries of faith with some humorous analogies.

What is TED? Per the TED website:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This collection is in no means narrow in their focus. There’s a broad palette to choose from, everything from Technology, Entertainment, Design, Business, Science, Culture, Arts, Global issues and so much more.

You could spend hours here. And you should.

The speeches are available on the TED website to watch online or to save to your desktop, as are the audio files as well. In addition, a large number of the videos are available as free podcast downloads on iTunes. You can even subscribe to receive future postings as well.

Having seen only a handful so far, I wanted to recommend the following. Mouse over for a brief description.

Although I try and curtail an over abundance of ‘pure geek fodder‘ on this website, this interview between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is not only a wonderful look back at the evolution of the industry, but it’s frickin’ hilarious. Seriously, these guys are having a great time talking about their history, competition, marketing and more. If you’re even the slightest bit of a geek, this will be worth watching. And if you’re heavily tapped into the industry and, like myself and many of my friends, you’ve actually lived through much of this, it’s priceless.

A great quote from Gates about Job’s return to power at Apple:

I was calling Gil Amelio on weekends and trying to get things moving. And then one day, Steve called me and said, ‘Don’t worry about those Amelio negotiations anymore.’

VIDEO: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together

Every once in awhile, I imagine no greater satisfaction then taking a sledge hammer to every piece of technology in my life and smashing them into small enough pieces that I can fill my pockets with their remains, and slowly, over time, empty the dust onto the exercise grounds of Shawshank Prison, where I serve my time for having gone postal over having one too many glitches send me over the edge. Today is one of those days. I let a friend borrow a hard drive, and tonight i hooked it back up, turned it on, my iMac froze up, and now my whole computer’s dead. It won’t boot. Under any condition. For no reason. And I am so furious, as I had so many other pressing tasks already to attend to, and now i have to sit and wait for a DVD to burn so I can, instead of getting the other things done, try and get that computer back up and running.

I swear, some times i feel like any minor change, even just sneezing, could cause some ridiculous chain reaction and for no logical reason, you’re down. Well, sure, there probably is a logical reason, but the time spent trying to just recover is more than enough wasted time, let alone trying to piece together the possible root cause for some freak anomaly. Like I have time for that.

I wanna live the Office Space moment right now… the one with the copier in the vacant lot and the sledge hammers. Damn, it’d feel good to be a gansta.

Grrrrrrrrrr….

I’ve just finished reading through a great article titled 10 Years of ‘Think Different’: The Ad Campaign that Restored Apple’s Reputation. The campaign was one that swept not only the world, but the Apple Campus as well. It was stirring and motivating to be working there, having gone through the lowest period, and to get such a focused and invigorating breath of fresh air back into our sails. The iconic selections, the prose and the images were all inspiring, and I made a point of collecting every poster I could, including some extreme rarities. Not only do I have one of every poster ever produced and released through normal channels, I was also fortunate enough to have received a couple of books memorializing the campaign which were handed out at an employee communication event. When they were being hung around campus I grabbed a complete set of the 6ft x 4ft tall ‘bus shelter’ size posters including Ali, Aldrin, Einstein and more. Through contacts I had I managed to get my hands on posters featuring Buzz Aldrin, an Alternate view of Picasso, Flick [from a bugs life], Chaplin, Copolla, the Dali Lama and even a signed Joan Baez. It’s a prized collection from a great time and even greater campaign.

I’ve just finished reading through a great article titled 10 Years of ‘Think Different’: The Ad Campaign that Restored Apple’s Reputation. The campaign was one that swept not only the world, but the Apple Campus as well. It was stirring and motivating to be working there, having gone through the lowest period, and to get such a focused and invigorating breath of fresh air back into our sails. The iconic selections, the prose and the images were all inspiring, and I made a point of collecting every poster I could, including some extreme rarities. Not only do I have one of every poster ever produced and released through normal channels, I was also fortunate enough to have received a couple of books memorializing the campaign which were handed out at an employee communication event. When they were being hung around campus I grabbed a complete set of the 6ft x 4ft tall ‘bus shelter’ size posters including Ali, Aldrin, Einstein and more. Through contacts I had I managed to get my hands on posters featuring Buzz Aldrin, an Alternate view of Picasso, Flick [from a bugs life], Chaplin, Copolla, the Dali Lama and even a signed Joan Baez. It’s a prized collection from a great time and even greater campaign.

I thought I’d share something I just stumbled across. I’m a pretty strong advocate of backing up your computer files. I’m that way because I’ve lost valuable data in the past that I’ve been unable to recover… and the costs of a hard drive these days is so reasonable that, for under $100, you can have great peace of mind. But once you have the hard drive how do you make the backup? Well, there’s numerous programs out there that do the job, and some come free with your hard drive purchase. I just stumbled across one such free one that you can download that does a very simple and effective job and won’t cost you a dime. It’s available for Mac and Windows. LaCie Backup. Check it out and start using it today…. it may end up being the best things you’ve done… at least until somebody invents a time machine.

I thought I’d share something I just stumbled across. I’m a pretty strong advocate of backing up your computer files. I’m that way because I’ve lost valuable data in the past that I’ve been unable to recover… and the costs of a hard drive these days is so reasonable that, for under $100, you can have great peace of mind. But once you have the hard drive how do you make the backup? Well, there’s numerous programs out there that do the job, and some come free with your hard drive purchase. I just stumbled across one such free one that you can download that does a very simple and effective job and won’t cost you a dime. It’s available for Mac and Windows. LaCie Backup. Check it out and start using it today…. it may end up being the best things you’ve done… at least until somebody invents a time machine.

I’m always looking for ways to make my daily life easier. And one of the things that’s toughest for me to do is to remember all the little tasks and to-do’s that come to mind at random times throughout the day. My pain point has been that a large amount of ideas and ‘notes to self’ come when i’m in the car, where it’s less then handy to write them down before they’re pushed aside by the next thought. Today, my friend Jess posted a must read entry on his website that captures the various ways we’ve all tried to address this need, and reveals a new one that looks very VERY promising. www.jott.com. You leave yourself a voicemail, it’s transcribed and sent to yourself as an email. There is even have a website you can use to track/organize the reminders as well. I’ve signed up for my free account and tested it. It’s pretty cool.

I’m always looking for ways to make my daily life easier. And one of the things that’s toughest for me to do is to remember all the little tasks and to-do’s that come to mind at random times throughout the day. My pain point has been that a large amount of ideas and ‘notes to self’ come when i’m in the car, where it’s less then handy to write them down before they’re pushed aside by the next thought. Today, my friend Jess posted a must read entry on his website that captures the various ways we’ve all tried to address this need, and reveals a new one that looks very VERY promising. www.jott.com. You leave yourself a voicemail, it’s transcribed and sent to yourself as an email. There is even have a website you can use to track/organize the reminders as well. I’ve signed up for my free account and tested it. It’s pretty cool.

It’s been a wild ride on “Mr-Jobs-Stock-Coaster” during the last 24 hours. With earnings announcements yesterday being well beyond expectations, and the subsequent after market trading flurry that had AAPL up to $99/share. Then things settled down, even deflated a bit. And as is customary, we had a company wide communications meeting today, to gather, review the company achievements and drink heavily from the Kool-aid fountains. And there was much rejoicing, and much to rejoice about. This was a record year, and the iPhone and AppleTV products take us into a whole new realm of products.

‘hic’

Steve’s still the master of casual, and discusses the state of affairs with confidence and ease, from a simple stool on a simple stage in the campus auditorium. Those of us not arriving early enough have the opportunity to view it live watch the meeting from one of many campus locations. I opt’d for the larger ‘Macs Cafe’ setting, where sitting in rows and rows of chairs while a large screen projection of Steve speaking brought oddly ironic visions of the 1984 commercial to mind.

Ultimately, and especially within the company, we’re all proud of our accomplishments and successes, and the opportunity to innovate and change the world. Nobody’s walking around zombie-like following communications meetings, nobody follows blindly without challenging and questioning decisions, and we’re not all gravitating towards worn jeans, black mock-turtlenecks and 2-day stubble. That said, those of us that were there recognize and respect the leadership and vision that has turned this company around from the tail-spinning fiasco it was pre-’97.

I watched the Apple Keynote today with Brian and Jess. As my prior post references, it’s something of a religious experience, and “Saint Steve” was in rare form at the pulpit today. Rare form indeed.

The introductions included a new Mac TV ad, announcing a shipping date of February for AppleTV, new movie downloads from Paramount, but the show stopper was definitely the iPhone. I’ve not been on the edge of my seat like that for some time. The demo of the features was spectacular, and it’s definitely going to be something I jump after as soon as they’re available. It’s beautiful, and it is a revolution in phones.
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I watched the Apple Keynote today with Brian and Jess. As my prior post references, it’s something of a religious experience, and “Saint Steve” was in rare form at the pulpit today. Rare form indeed.

The introductions included a new Mac TV ad, announcing a shipping date of February for AppleTV, new movie downloads from Paramount, but the show stopper was definitely the iPhone. I’ve not been on the edge of my seat like that for some time. The demo of the features was spectacular, and it’s definitely going to be something I jump after as soon as they’re available. It’s beautiful, and it is a revolution in phones.
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Wow…. I had to pause a moment and post this for my geek friends… David Pogue, a prominent author in the Macintosh community, has posted a wonderful entry on his blog, reflecting on the grim view in the press on Apple from 1996, 10 years ago. And boy does it bring back memories. Memories of Gil Ameilo’s landmark ‘no more wimp bullshit‘ comment at a communications meeting. Memories of Steve Jobs commandeering a keynote at MacWorld from under Amelio, and shortly thereafter, my coming to work to hear the news of Gil’s subsequent ousting. Memories of Steve on a lone stool on the crescent shaped cement stage in the center of the campus, delivering his first message to the staff after having stepped in to help stop the bleeding. And the memory of a phone call i got in 1996, during the Gil reign and one of the company’s lowest points, from my boss at the time, advising me of yet-another round of layoffs taking place. I was traveling, on vacation actually, and I was standing in the Denver airport, about to head back to Cupertino, being told that even more of my friends and co-workers, and in a sense, more of my hope and faith, was being whittled away. When I asked her if I was being given an option to take a package or stick around she said “No, you’re not going anywhere. We’ll be here to shut the lights off.”

What a difference a decade makes.

Pogue’s Posts – When Apple Hit Bottom
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Wow…. I had to pause a moment and post this for my geek friends… David Pogue, a prominent author in the Macintosh community, has posted a wonderful entry on his blog, reflecting on the grim view in the press on Apple from 1996, 10 years ago. And boy does it bring back memories. Memories of Gil Ameilo’s landmark ‘no more wimp bullshit‘ comment at a communications meeting. Memories of Steve Jobs commandeering a keynote at MacWorld from under Amelio, and shortly thereafter, my coming to work to hear the news of Gil’s subsequent ousting. Memories of Steve on a lone stool on the crescent shaped cement stage in the center of the campus, delivering his first message to the staff after having stepped in to help stop the bleeding. And the memory of a phone call i got in 1996, during the Gil reign and one of the company’s lowest points, from my boss at the time, advising me of yet-another round of layoffs taking place. I was traveling, on vacation actually, and I was standing in the Denver airport, about to head back to Cupertino, being told that even more of my friends and co-workers, and in a sense, more of my hope and faith, was being whittled away. When I asked her if I was being given an option to take a package or stick around she said “No, you’re not going anywhere. We’ll be here to shut the lights off.”

What a difference a decade makes.

Pogue’s Posts – When Apple Hit Bottom
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Business Week has a very interesting article on the man behind ‘The Man’ at Apple; Jonathan Ive. They’ve also got an excellent slide show of his “Apple Portfolio” wryly entitled “An Ive For Design” which is all the more fun to view having been at Apple during much of the time these came about.

I was fortunate enough to be included at a presentation Jonathan Ive gave to our team back in late ‘99, after Steve had returned and after the iMac’s were reviving Apple. He was just as this article states; casual, modest and passionate about design.

The design team is indeed sheltered away in one of the campus buildings, where all but a few badges are turned away with a simple red light and a ‘moan’ toned beep of dismay from the card reader. They have their own ‘wing’ so to speak, with their own kitchen and chef on hand, and i’m sure the air there is purified as well. But holy-shit, look at what they crank out! If that’s what it takes, all the more power to ‘em. Meanwhile, I’ll continue gaze at those closed quarters from the outside, and hope that perhaps some day I’ll be in a position to glimpse the hallowed walls within.

I’ve posted the article text to this entry as well, just in case the Business Week post has a limited lifetime.

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OK, here’s a quick tip about something I found a few months back, signed up for, forgot about, and received a pleasant reminder of today.

While getting ready to leave home for work this morning, a text message came across my cell phone, advising me that the freeway I normally take to work was backed up. I had a meeting to make and I took an alternate route, helping me arrive on time. All thanks to that text message alert from http://www.traffic.com.

It’s free to sign up. You define your route and alert levels, and alert options, and you forget about it. Until you need it and it’s right there.

http://www.traffic.com

Without a doubt, one of the greatest joys of my position at Apple is being involved in and privy to much of the ‘new’ stuff long before it’s announced. Yet it’s also like knowing what you’re getting for Christmas as early as June. It’s a mixed blessing, and today’s announcements are exactly such a situation. I’ve been biting my tongue for weeks now, and finally, now that the cats out of the bag, can comment here on what’s been revealed! Whew!
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If you’ve noticed a sudden surge in my movie reviews, it’s because I’ve had the opportunity to set up a Mac mini in my home, and after a few weeks of trials, quirks, and successful usage, I have compiled a mental list of pros and cons that I thought I’d capture here, under the title of Foremost Quarrel. There’s a hidden meaning to this title, try and figure it out on your own, or position your mouse over the words here for a brief explanation.
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At a recent Apple event they screened an ‘unaired’ commercial for us that was very very funny. I thought ‘That’ll never see the light of day’. I thought wrong. It’s posted on Apple’s website. Go check it out. Watch “The PC Guy” deliver his own greeting to the attendees of the annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

Like many long time Mac users and definitely, as an Apple Employee, any time we get to hear Steve speak, we look forward to walking away mesmerized and enthused. The man is a truly dynamic and captivating speaker, and has the ability to rally the troops like no other. Having worked at Apple under Scully, Spindler, Amelio and Jobs, no leadership besides that of Jobs has taken Apple forward and upward.

Yet at this years WWDC Keynote, as the press appears to have noticed as well, it was not quite ‘up to par’ with most of his previous speeches. Even my close friends and co-workers were surprised at the handing off of many portions of the keynote to other leaders within the company while Steve stepped back into the sidelines. Also, many have commented on his appearing thinner then usual.

I have my own thoughts on this, some echo that of the popular press and others are more ‘first hand’ observations.
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At lunch today, the topic of passwords came up, and after having a good reception to the schema I use that helps me never forget a web password, and having had the same reception to the idea in the past, I thought I’d add it to my blog for other’s to consider and use.
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There’s an increasing amount of information available online about how you can use your Mac to transfer your favorite DVD and Video content onto your computer or your iPod, for playback. I love this option, as I envision a future where i’ll have favorite shows or movies on a hard drive, connected to my TV, accessible immediately. Of course there’s still that whole ‘time to watch’ and ‘why watch the same thing over and over’ issue to resolve, but it’s still pretty cool. Meanwhile, using the simple encoding options, I can easily rent or checkout a movie, save it to my hard drive, and watch at my leisure. That’s a great option when I don’t always have time to watch them right away, or I know they’re not something i’ll be watching with my wife.

Here’s just a few sites that have been useful resources for me.

Playlistmag.com Posted this article about Encoding for TV playback from an iPod.

iLounge.com provides this info regarding Encoding for iPod or CPU Playback

Plasticbugs.com also have more details regarding Encoding for iPod.

There’s an increasing amount of information available online about how you can use your Mac to transfer your favorite DVD and Video content onto your computer or your iPod, for playback. I love this option, as I envision a future where i’ll have favorite shows or movies on a hard drive, connected to my TV, accessible immediately. Of course there’s still that whole ‘time to watch’ and ‘why watch the same thing over and over’ issue to resolve, but it’s still pretty cool. Meanwhile, using the simple encoding options, I can easily rent or checkout a movie, save it to my hard drive, and watch at my leisure. That’s a great option when I don’t always have time to watch them right away, or I know they’re not something i’ll be watching with my wife.

Here’s just a few sites that have been useful resources for me.

Playlistmag.com Posted this article about Encoding for TV playback from an iPod.

iLounge.com provides this info regarding Encoding for iPod or CPU Playback

Plasticbugs.com also have more details regarding Encoding for iPod.

I saw one of the new Ads for Apple last night while riding the ever entertaining ‘Mr Bauer’s implausibility coaster‘. I was later advised by my good friend, co-worker and bloggerwannabe Brian, that the ads are all avail online. I’d direct you to Brian’s website for that post, but he’s, uh, he’s not updated it, uh, ‘recently’. In any case, whatever it takes to eventually get Brian’s constantly insightful observations and timely updates published online, thank you, sir, for the link to the commercials, they are excellent!

As an added bonus, it’s refreshing to see that Warren has outgrown his awkwardly geeky obsession with Carol Vessey. Perhaps her having become a lawyer in Boston and no longer being ‘Stuck in Stuckeyville’ had something to do with it.

Watch the new Apple Ads

Well, it looks like the mPod music player I commented on recently has formally released, and surprise surprise, the name and UI have changed. :-/. Hmmmm… me thinks legal might have gotten involved, or perhaps they just thought twice. Hard to say but the full iPod-like aspects have been trimmed down. Still, it remains a really great product, and with the potential to sync with iTunes on the horizon, it could be the best choice on the market.
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